Author
Topic: To Ace - The Mob (Read 654 times)

Ace, I didn't want to get off topic, but this is a fairly interesting story, given the NJ mob connection thing.

My father was born and raised in Brooklyn. When he was alive, he was a world-class hustler with an 8th-grade education. He had, uhh, "friends" from there. They owned funeral homes, trucking and construction busineses, limo outfits, etc. in NY. They would come out to our house in the 'burbs almost every weekend in the summer to have cookouts and "talk". They would come up to me as a kid and say things like "Ey, Paulie. Ya beein a good boy for ya dad there?" Slip a $20 into my pocket and say ala Good Fellas "Alright, ya don't say nuttin to nobody, alright? Fuhget abbout it". Give me the guinea pinch on the cheek.

They had names like Sal and Bruno, (who's cleaning business in Raritan mysteriously burned to the ground one night). They all drove Lincolns and Caddys. Black, the standard color. They all had pinky rings, silk ties, shiny jackets and Bryl Creem, (it was late 60's). They were some of the nicest guys I ever knew. But guys you would not wanna cross or you would "end up in the weeds". These guys are all dead now.

Even as a kid, I was always amazed at how fast my father could open a small business, close it, and open another. Once he wanted to open another small business, (not in Raritan). He could not get a permit from the city council because he was an outsider. He made a phone call. Got the permit soon after. Circumstances unknown. He had connections on both sides of the law.

Relatives have told me that I have cousins in NY from the same family that are cops - and robbers. One is my cousin Vinny, (I can't make this stuff up). I haven't seen them since I was a kid.

People have asked me, "So, why didn't you join?". My answer is no one ever asked me. Why? Because my mother is from Sayreville NJ - Polish, which makes me half Polish and there is no mixed blood allowed in la cosa nostra, (this thing of ours), or la familia, (the family).

Would I have? No. To this day, I hate the Sopranos. It's boring. Guys like him were a dime a dozen back then.

So I'm stabbin' dis guy wit an ice pick, right? And what happens? The freakin ice pick breaks! And I'm thinkin' - what ever to American craftsmanship? So, I trow da guy out da window instead. But stupit me, were on da foyst floor! I had to run da guy over two, tree times wit my new Caddy. You seen my Caddy. It's da one I got from dat booky in Joysy. Da guy dey found in da weeds. Woyst case a suicide da feds ever saw. Guy stabbed himself in da back 22 times. Whataya gonna do? Fuhget about it.

I live in an Italian-American neighborhood of Brooklyn that still has a little bit of a mob presence, though nothing like it used to be. One morning a couple of years ago I was walking the dog and saw tire marks leading into the Marco Polo restaurant, a large concrete flowerpot exploded all over the sidewalk, and the awning sprawled all over the place. When I got home, my landlord was hanging out on the stoop and told me, with his right hand making a wiping motion off to the side, that the police raided a "meeting" at Marco Polo by driving a van through the front door, which was locked and barricaded.

He's also showed me the spot around the corner where some boss shot a guy dead in the street, went inside, and then came out in his bathrobe after the cops arrived to ask what had happened.

Every once in a while this little old lady will ask me if I'm walking a Boston Bulldog, and then reminisce about how the neighborhood was full of them when the mob was still around.